


and the truth shall set you free

by kwritten



Category: Veronica Mars (TV)
Genre: Gen, Pre-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-30
Updated: 2015-09-30
Packaged: 2018-04-24 02:28:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,678
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4902070
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kwritten/pseuds/kwritten
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>for the prompt:  The Pool House, pre-series, veronica and logan talking about lily, drinking</p><p>There was a long silence, as if Logan was debating between <i>how big is Duncan, really</i> and <i>why don’t you ever choose Dare</i> and Lilly wished that there was a way she could sink into the floor and not have to witness this embarrassment. <br/>“Do you think Lilly really loves me? Like…” there was a heavy thump as Logan sat down on the smooth floor. <br/>“Oh <i>Logan</i>,” Veronica ran across the room to his side. <br/>Of course she did. <br/>Tears streamed down Lilly’s face. She took another swig of the bourbon.</p>
            </blockquote>





	and the truth shall set you free

Lilly loved the Echolls pool house. It always smelled loosely of cinnamon and apples, because one year Lynn decided to venture out and decorate the entire house from top to bottom with Christmas decorations, but then forgot and never took them down. No matter what time of year, there were candy canes in the kitchenette, cinnamon candles and lotions sprinkled around the house, red-and-green towels in the bathroom. It had a general spicy air that she identified with stillness and silence, with time stopping. 

Sometimes she looked in the mirror and she could _see_ herself changing, her eyes growing harder, her smile sharper, all her angles and curves just a ruse to pull people in; but in the pool house time stopped. Shit happened, events occurred, but time stopped. Like there was nothing outside of it, like something about being inside of it kept her safe. 

Kept the world safe from her. 

Lilly loved the Echolls pool house probably more than she loved Logan. Her boyfriend, the one she told people about. She loved the clean linens and the wide windows. She loved that it was empty and waiting when she wasn’t inside of it, loved walking in and finding someone already there, stuck in time, paused for her benefit. She loved thinking of a space as being hers, as being truly _hers_ , especially since she was stealing it after all. There was nothing in the world that she touched that hadn’t been stolen from someone else, that hadn’t been usurped in the most necessary and painful way. 

She kept a cinnamon Christmas candle from the pool house on her vanity at home and told Duncan that she hated it, but wouldn’t let him touch it. It was hers. 

She stole it and so it was hers. 

lilly loved the Echolls pool house because it felt stolen and left-over like her, the sum of all the leftover parts, all the hidden away things, all the secrets that couldn’t be kept in the main house, shunted over to this little space and inside of it was her. So she kept her secrets there, too. Kept her manic laughter and the way Logan touched her but she couldn’t feel him, the way Aaron touched her but she couldn’t feel anything but ice, the way Eli loved her but her heart didn’t speed up or slow down the way the stories tell her they should. If only she could. 

Didn’t they know she was just their forgotten thing, their pool house, their cinnamon-apple-spicy leftovers of time pressed to pause and left waiting?

Of course they didn’t, they thought she was all theirs. 

Lilly loved the Echolls pool house, loved getting drunk inside of it all alone where the world couldn’t touch her, where no one could see her stumble and cry and let her body sink to the floor without shame. Where no one---

“Logan! Don’t!!!!” Veronica’s shrieking, playful scream filled the house. 

Lilly looked down at the half-empty bottle of bourbon in her hand. Aaron could afford for her to drink the good stuff. And if he couldn’t, fuck him. 

“I swear to fucking god, Veronica Mars,” Logan came charging through the door that lead to the pool, armed with a massive water gun and wearing just a pair of swim trunks. Lilly ducked into a shadow and waited silently. “You did this to yourself!”

“No!!!” Veronica giggled and shrieked and something inside Lilly’s chest broke into a thousand pieces. She couldn’t see, but she could guess, that when Veronica appeared, her little white dress was going to be soaked. Probably her brother’s idea, the idiot. Lilly took another drink.

“Okay, hey - I’m sorry!” Logan’s voice sounded sure, deep. He was growing up. 

Maybe time didn’t stop in here the way it was supposed to. 

“No you’re not,” there was no bitterness in Veronica’s voice. She and Logan had been friends since before Lilly and Duncan came along, terrorizing the playground with pranks and gymnastic events that always ended in tears. Usually Logan’s, not Veronica’s. Lilly couldn’t imagine a world where the two of them didn’t have each other’s back, didn’t soften their voice for the other’s ear, didn’t tease in a way that was meant to hurt as if to prove that they were the only ones capable of healing the other’s wounds. 

Veronica was right. He probably wasn’t sorry. 

He was so very rarely sorry for the things that he did and always, always sorry for all the things he wished he could do and didn’t. 

That’s why Lilly kissed him with her eyes closed, because if she could see that much of what he kept hidden under his skin, she shuddered to think what he might discover about her. 

“It’s your turn,” Logan said, breaking into Lilly’s thoughts. 

“We should go back.”

“No,” he probably was holding his arms out at shoulder length to keep her from leaving. He liked to throw his body around like it meant something to him, like there was any power in it at all. “Choose. Truth or Dare.”

Lilly held her breath. Veronica always picked Truth. 

Veronica sighed heavily, pretending to debate, Lilly could practically taste the smirk on Logan’s face even if she couldn’t see it. “Truth.”

“Of course.”

“Just ask, Logan.”

There was a long silence, as if Logan was debating between _how big is Duncan, really_ and _why don’t you ever choose Dare_ and Lilly wished that there was a way she could sink into the floor and not have to witness this embarrassment. 

“Do you think Lilly really loves me? Like…” there was a heavy thump as Logan sat down on the smooth floor. 

“Oh _Logan_ ,” Veronica ran across the room to his side. 

Of course she did. 

Tears streamed down Lilly’s face. She took another swig of the bourbon. 

“Of _course_ she does. Of course she loves you, why would you even ask that?” She was so soft, that Veronica Mars. Could take broken thing in her hand and shape them into something nearly recognizable as a person. 

“Sometimes it just feels like… like she’s not all in. I’m _all in_ , Veronica. And she’s… waiting for something better to come along,” he sounded like he was drowning. 

Lilly sank to the floor, hugging her knees to her chest. 

“You’re kind of like … _fifteen_ , Logan,” Veronica teased, her voice full of empathy and understanding even as she laughed under her breath at him. “No one is really _all in_ when they’re in high school.”

“You know what? Just forget it,” he stood up, probably shook her hands away, probably put all of his shields back up. 

Lilly knew what that looked like. 

Maybe she’s even the one who taught him how. 

“Logan,” Veronica stood up, her voice taking on that hard edge that said she was a Mars, that she was the daughter of the sheriff, that she had officially run out of fuck’s to give, that she believed whomever was listening was strong enough to take a healthy dose of reality (even if she wasn’t). _That’s my girl_ , Lilly thought blurrily. “Get _over_ yourself. You love Lilly, she loves you. If she doesn’t love you in the same way you love her, that doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with either one of you - you are different people. Lilly loves… the way she loves. And we love her anyway. So just…”

“Man up?”

Veronica snorted, Lilly smiled at the sound, “No. Men are weak and pathetic. Just _deal_. Or stand up for yourself. You think she’s not treating you right, you think you deserve more, then you fucking _say_ something. Don’t sit around whining and moaning about how you aren’t getting what you want. If you want something, ask for it. And if she can’t or won’t give it to you, then walk away.”

“You want me to break up with Lilly?”

She took another swig of the bourbon. The floor tilted slightly. She held back a giggle. 

“I want…” Veronica’s voice lowered. “I want you to be happy. If being with Lilly doesn’t make you happy - no matter how much you love her - then don’t stay.”

“I’m worried about her Mars.”

“Why?”

Lilly turned to the lamp next to her and smiled at it, poor innocent Veronica Mars. 

“You should be too, you know.”

“Hey Logan?”

“What?”

“Truth or Dare?”

Lilly felt the air in the house become thick and heavy. 

“Truth.”

Logan always picked Dare. 

“Why do you always pick Dare?”

“Why do you always pick Truth?”

“That’s not how it works, Logan.”

“Because the truth is for suckers.”

Veronica smiled. It was soft and sweet. Lilly knew. She knew like she knew so many things that she shouldn’t. 

“Ask me again.”

“What?”

“Ask me, _again_.”

Logan shuffled his feet. He wanted a drink. He wanted to run out the door. He wanted all these things and he didn’t do them and Lilly didn’t know why. 

Which maybe told her something she didn’t want to know. 

“Does Lilly love me?”

Veronica giggled a high-pitched girly giggle, “Oh my GOD Logan, she loves you _so_ much! She thinks you are like… the GREATEST boyfriend ever.”

Lilly dropped the bourbon in her lap, it splashed a little bit on her dress. Oh fucking well. 

Logan chuckled thickly, “Yeah, she does.”

_Because the truth is for suckers._

“You learn fast, Mars.”

“Truth.”

Logan opened the door and gestured her out, probably held his arm up over her head as she walked through so she had to duck under him, slide close next to him, “So how big is Duncan’s----”

Lilly stumbled into the bedroom of the pool house and watched them walk back to the pool where Duncan was waiting, pushing each other and teasing each other, Logan threatening her with his water gun and her laughing so hard her sides will ache tomorrow.

Lilly turned her gaze to the light hanging above the bed and smirked. 

_Because truth is for suckers._

“Oh man,” she said under her breath, “Am I gonna make a sucker out of you.”


End file.
